Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) cautioned those celebrating Charlie Kirk‘s death after businesses and other institutions fired employees who celebrated the conservative activist’s assassination last week.
American Airlines removed several pilots from service who were “caught celebrating” the conservative activist’s assassination, and even offline, Office Depot fired an employee who refused to print vigil posters of Kirk for a customer. Clemson University also suspended a professor over their “inappropriate social media content” regarding the assassination.
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“This is about protecting the individual businesses,” Lankford said on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday morning. “What people are seeing is this cancel culture that still persists, that if you voice something that becomes a big pushback from the community, the employer will step up and say, ‘Hey, you’re about to kill our business based on what you’re saying online.’ Everyone has to understand what they say privately online can get connected to their business.”
Lankford pointed to a veterinarian clinic in his home state that has received community pushback after an employee posted a derogatory online message about Kirk that encouraged further violence. Lankford said customers will ask themselves, “Do I want to do business with that person if they have that belief?”
“This is part of the challenge that we have with social media and with employment. Employers are going to say, ‘Don’t hurt our business based on the foolish things that you choose to say, to be able to say, online,'” Lankford said.
COX SAYS KIRK SAID ‘SOME VERY INFLAMMATORY’ THINGS BUT ALSO PREACHED FORGIVENESS
Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) called for consequences for those making derogatory online postings against Kirk in an appearance on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures. She called the online rhetoric “absolutely disgusting.”
“If you are out there, and you are celebrating the political assassination of a man who was exercising his free speech — a very foundational element, a cornerstone of who we are as the United States of America — you should be held accountable, you should be fired,” Britt told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo on Sunday.